Bitcoin and ether tumbled on Monday to multi-month price drop as worries over a possible U.S. recession in the wake of soft data gripped financial markets and triggered a rush to safe-haven assets. Crypto markets have gotten a boost this year after the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission approved an exchange-traded fund to track the spot price of bitcoin and ether.
More recently, however, bitcoin has fallen alongside other assets including global equities in a broad selloff as investors fear that a U.S. recession could be on the horizon, with rising geopolitical worries also weighing. The cryptocurrency market saw losses that are nearly 20% from its March 2024 high.
Bitcoin price drop
Bitcoin price decline with it having the worst week as it sank to $53,091, its lowest since late February. It last fetched $54,112, while ether slid to its weakest since mid-January and was last down 16% at $2,300.
“It’s a big reminder that Bitcoin and crypto in general are risk assets and sit at the pointy end of the risk spectrum,” said Tony Sycamore, market analyst at IG.
Sycamore said bitcoin is testing trend channel support at $54,000/$53,000 area and needs to hold that level to “prevent further capitulation towards $48,000.”
Bitcoin was trading at $53,275.3 by 21:11 on Monday, down 12.29% on the day. It was the largest one-day percentage loss since November 9, 2022.
Bitcoin market capitalization falling
The downwards trend pushed Bitcoin’s market capitalization down to $1,105.9B, or 56.04% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. At its highest, Bitcoin’s market capitalization was $1,435.8B.
Bitcoin had traded in a range of $52,956.1 to $58,291.4 in the previous twenty-four hours.
Bitcoin’s worst week with major price decline
Over the past seven days, Bitcoin has seen a major drop in price, as it lost 18.43%. The volume of Bitcoin traded in the twenty-four hours was $35.1B or 41.63% of the total volume of all cryptocurrencies. It has traded in a range of $52,956.0898 to $66,998.3047 in the past 7 days.
At its current price, Bitcoin is still down 27.75% from its all-time high of $73,740.90 set on March 14.
Crypto market losses
Ethereum was last at $2,201.12 on the Investing.com Index, down 24.47% on the day.
Tether USDt was trading at $0.9997 on the Investing.com Index, a gain of 0.01%.
Ethereum’s market cap was last at $301.1B or 15.26% of the total cryptocurrency market cap, while Tether USDt’s market cap totaled $114.5B or 5.80% of the total cryptocurrency market value.
Investor Sentiment
The recent selloff underscores the volatile nature of cryptocurrencies, often seen as high-risk assets. As geopolitical tensions rise and economic uncertainties loom, investor sentiment has shifted, triggering a broad selloff across both crypto and traditional financial markets.
